Guido d'Arezzo's Work

Many aspects of modern western musical notation can be related back to Guido’s theory; he played a very important role in history. This includes the much-recognized solfège syllables ‘Ut-re-mi-fa-so-la’, now do-re-mi-fa-so-la, a solmisation system still in place today. Guido took these syllables from ‘The Hymn of St. John’, or ‘Ut quaent laxis’, a Latin hymn from the 8th century:

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The staff still in use today was developed from the four-line staff Guido invented. The staff we use now has five lines, but it originally only had four because Gregonian chants usually only used notes within a four-line range. He taught the whole hexachord range to singers using the letters ‘a’ to ‘g’ written in capital, lowercase and double lowercase. Before Guido d’Arezzo, a musician could not send,a piece of music to another musician on a piece of paper so the second musician could play it. Without his innovations music from all over the world would have been lost in history.